In 2011, a new Pennsylvania nonprofit, All Votes Matter, began spending tens of thousands of dollars lobbying in favor of changing how Pennsylvania's electoral votes are awarded to presidential candidates.

Read more about CREW's research in the Philadelphia Inquirer: Ethics group says politics fueled GOP's quest to change voting rules

Pennsylvania

In 2011, a new Pennsylvania nonprofit, All Votes Matter, began spending tens of thousands of dollars lobbying in favor of changing how Pennsylvania’s electoral votes are awarded to presidential candidates. Instead of awarding all 20 electoral votes to the winner of the state’s popular vote, the group wanted to allocate one vote to the winner of each of the state’s 18 congressional districts, with the remaining two electoral votes going to the winner of the popular vote.

The plan was widely viewed as giving Republicans an opportunity to pick up some electoral votes in Pennsylvania, which was considered a battleground state. The proposal won support from several prominent Pennsylvania Republicans, including Gov. Tom Corbett and state House and Senate leaders, but others in the party opposed it, including the head of the state Republican party and members of the congressional delegation, and the change was never made.

All Votes Matter was headed by William Sloane, a former chief counsel for Pennsylvania’s House Democrats, but most of the support for the proposal came from Republicans and the group hired a prominent Republican firm to lobby state legislators during the period leading up to the 2012 elections.

The source of the money behind All Votes Matter, which was organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, was a mystery. The group refused to reveal its donors’ identities.

A new analysis of nonprofit tax filings by CREW, however, shows much of the money came from a network of conservative nonprofit organizations linked to billionaire businessmen Charles and David Koch. These groups contributed at least $280,000 in 2011 and 2012, more than half the total amount All Votes Matter reported raising over the same two-year period. None of the groups are based in Pennsylvania and all refuse to reveal the identities of their own donors, making it impossible to determine the source of the money behind All Votes Matter.

In 2011, All Votes Matter received:

$20,000 from Arizona-based Americans for Responsible Leadership;
$40,000 from Washington, D.C.-based American Commitment;
$40,000 from Iowa-based American Future Fund;
$40,000 from Arizona-based Free Enterprise America;
$60,000 from the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), an Arizona nonprofit and key player in the Koch-linked network that distributed millions of dollars to other political active nonprofits.

In 2012, CPPR reported giving All Votes Matter another $80,000 grant, the only contribution the group reported receiving that year.

Dark money groups have funneled millions of dollars into controlling state governments, efforts that have paid dividends at the federal level by letting them, among other things, control congressional redistricting, a strategy the New York Times highlighted on Sunday. The conservative nonprofits’ support for the push to change the way electoral votes are awarded in Pennsylvania fits in with that scheme, and suggests these groups are also trying to alter the way in which presidents are elected. Americans will have to remain vigilant to ensure partisans do not coopt every aspect of our electoral process.

Thursday January 23, 2014, 5:06 pm
These greedy-gutses are out to turn us into a feudal society, with the 1% nobles controlling 99% of the wealth and the peasants scratching in the dirt on their behalf.

Thursday January 23, 2014, 9:42 pm
Evil is a word I rarely rarely use but it fits the Koch Brothers. I don't know what made them think they are superior but if it was a parent their Karmic debt is heavy. The people will and must rise up in the millions in a way that cuts off their cushy life and corporate profits. Hit them in their corporate greedy profits or we will never stop them. TY JL Noted.

Friday January 24, 2014, 1:44 am
Noted. To me, I found this sentence important: "A new Pennsylvania NON-PROFIT" . Remember the blow up by the TP's that they were targeted by the IRS. There is nothing NON-PROFIT about anything these people create. It's always about money and power. Less money and power for the working citizens, more money and power for the 1%. I live in PA. This all goes back to the election of 2010 when Corbett became Governor. He's not finished trying to destroy PA. But we have elections in 2014, we have a chance to fix at least some stuff.

Friday January 24, 2014, 3:43 pm
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided).

Instead, The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps that pre-determine the election. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.

When the bill is enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The presidential election system that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founders but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founders in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. States can, and frequently have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

The bill has passed 32 state legislative chambers in 21 rural, small, medium, and large states with 243 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 10 jurisdictions with 136 electoral votes – 50.4% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

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